Awakening
by Unravelling
Summary: Alek opens his eyes to a unfamiliar world and a life he doesn't quite remember living. With only flawed visions and smiling strangers, he tries to put his past together, piece by broken piece. Discontinued.
1. Open

**All these books are belong to Scott.**

**I have to thank nagato chinatsu's "Behemoth Drabbles - Chpt. 3" for being the spark to this idea.**

**Sorry guys for the crippling indecision -**_** and lack of full updates -**_** but with this whole idea still so raw (and the less than stellar state of mind I began writing in) I find myself constantly picking out 'flaws'. I think I've finally satisfied my OCD (if you wanna call it that) and can now start planning what comes next!**

**Once again, sorry! XD**

**In the meantime, read on!**

* * *

><p>The boy wakes up one day –<em> like any other<em>, he thinks at first.

_How wrong he is._

Weakened limbs struggle to lift his aching form as a set of slothful eyes slowly slide open.

Looking around at the pristine but unfamiliar white walls and the matching cloths draped over him only evokes a sense of _strangeness__ in him_, one that pulses through his veins and urges him to _leave_.

An odd beeping noise echoes around him, eerily rising in a gradual crescendo.

His heart begins thumping a frantic beat and his arms start trembling _madly_. The whining beep is gone now, replaced by a dull roar that pummels at his ear drums, overwhelming all else, and his eyes clench shut as burning points of pain coalesce on his skin.

He thinks he's screaming – _lungs tightening, throat raw_ – but any noise made is lost to the growing storm, swallowed in that raging chaos of sound.

The pain explodes and spider-web cracks of fire lance across his skin, searing through to the bone. One hand clutches desperately at his skull and his jaw snaps open to screa—**blackness engulfs him.**

**The images flash past, blurring together in a too-fast stream of sensations.**

**_Fireonskin—Bodybroken—Liquidcopper—Screaming—PAIN_**_**PAINPAINPAIN**_

_**Then**_

_**Nothing.**_

When he next peels back his stiff eye-lids, he is greeted by a pair of sky blue orbs, bright with surprise. As the eyes ease back, sandy blonde locks of hair fall into place, a golden frame for a perfect portrait.

The girl cups his face in her hands, calloused yet firm fingers brushing over twisted skin. Her face draws nearer, eyes welling with caged hope, and when her lips are just shy of his own she murmurs something.

"_Alek?"_

A name? The word is unfamiliar, but his heart jolts at its utterance and suddenly the room tilts. Vertigo sweeps him up in a nauseous wave –_ acidic bile roiling up his raw throat –_ and for a moment the world spins away into swirling white washed oblivion.

**He stands tall in the snapping gale, half-frozen fingers bared to the winds as he clasps hands with the boy before him. The dusty blonde hair, pale and shimmering with half-thawed frost, and the clear sapphire gleam feel faintly familiar. But before he can ponder it further, a foreign urge nudges at his mind and his lips are opening, of their own will. A thickly accented voice spills out, smooth despite the mad chattering of his teeth.**

**"My name is…" **

"…_Alek?"_

His eyelids flutter, the superimposition still lingering over reality. A note of hesitation creeps into her voice and the gleam of hope in her eyes is fading to something less. His own are still uncomprehending, an emerald mist of self-induced bewilderment.

"_Am I...Alek?" _He manages to croak into the lingering silence. There is none of the cultured nobility that pulsed within the vision-boy's voice.

Panic and disbelief seep into her faltering gaze and the blood drains from her face, bleaching her sharp features to a chalky white_. _She latches onto him, shakes him violently, as though the jerking motions might fill the void in his mind

_"W-what? Stop messing around, _dummkopf_!"_

He doesn't understand and she must see it in his odd stare because suddenly hot pain crackles across the dry skin of his cheek. Ears ringing with the faded echoes of a thunderclap, he reels back onto the rough pillow –_ white like everything else –_ and, despite the smarting sting on his skin, feels nothing but emptiness in his hollow chest. Her next words tumble out, voice broken and pleading like shattered ice melting even as it falls.

_"Liebhaber...?"_

The word sends a warm tingle slithering up his spine and births an incessant curiosity in his mind.

His tongue darts out to flick over cracked lips and the word falls out in a slow rasp, like crumpling paper.

_"...lovers?"_

She doesn't answer, only lets out an odd choking cry and buries her moistening cheeks against his chest, trembling. He feels liquid warmth seeping through to spread like frozen fire over his long untouched skin and the rustling of thin cloth as she sobs out whispered denials into the silence.

As he lays there with this woman, wreathed in gold and set with sapphires, weeping over him, he feels a pang of responsibility and the nagging sensation that he _should_ know her. A million different questions boil along his tongue, fighting to escape.

_Who am I?_

_Who are you?  
><em>

But still there are no answers, save the keening echoes of her grief.

* * *

><p><strong>I'll be continuing with this as my main focus but the schedule is stacking up and the story-idea is still fresh so bear with me :)<strong>

**Feedback/critique is appreciated as always :D**

**Thanks for reading!**


	2. Your Eyes

**So after much procrastinating and rewriting I've decided to just post the damn thing and see how it fits XD**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>Her most vivid memories of him are that of his eyes.<p>

Stiff, clanker nobility might've been bred into his flesh and bones but they could never snuff out those eyes. Always, they shone brilliantly, like beacons in the dark and gateways to his soul.

_Blisters_, but she loved his eyes, green as fresh-cut emeralds and open, like wide-flung windows to his being.

They were unforgettable, and_ oh did they draw her in, _like a fluttering silkmoth to flame.

She can remember all the different emotions that flashed through those orbs, all the little signs that foretold his moods.

She remembers how they could burn with a deadly, intense determination.

"**Dangerous?" she asks, voice _almost_ betraying her barking nerves. Faintly, she can make out the sounds of men working and the dull throb of a great heartbeat over the rising snowstorm. **

**This boy –_ clanker boy –_ Alek never breaks his stare, inexorable and unwavering like the great statues in London Square and speaks again.**

"**Very deadly."**

She remembers the way they shimmered with unshed tears, a veil over his fathomless sadness.

**His whole frame seems to sag in that instant. He looks at her, eyes screaming silent pain and his mouth slowly drops open like he's about to say something.**

**But nothing comes out and he clenches shut his eyes, a broken dam trying to halt a flood. All his rigid nobility and presence vanishes to the winds and he slumps to the floor, huddled in on himself, face buried in his hands.**

**Her heart tugs her forward, drops her at his side and gently lays a hand on his shoulder. She murmurs sweet nothings that drift through the silence, like Jaspert had to her, once long ago.**

**She tries to imagine what it'd be like losing both her parents at once and only feels her heart break for the sobbing boy. **

As she sits there staring out the small window, warm tears leak freely down her quivering cheeks to land with soft _pitter-patters_ on her dress.

As she sits there with only white walls for company, waiting with skin-crawling dread, she can't help but seek solace in the memory of happier days.

**As they lie there on the rough military sheets, wrapped in an intimate embrace of hot skin and supple flesh, she presses one ear to his heart. It beats away, steady and strong –_ assured –_ like a Mayfair parade drum, always there, always lifting spirits and all. She likes that given long enough, their heartbeats entwine together –_ 'it's the barking girl in me,'_ she thinks, but she can't contain the smile blooming on her face.**

"**And what, pray tell, are you so happy about?" he asks, voice low, husky and wry at the same time as his warm breath tickles her skin. She looks up into his green gaze, tender and loving, and just grins mischievously, pressing herself snugly against him.**

"**Lots of things, aye, but right now, I'm just wondering how this whole blistering mess'll end."**

"**Well, we'll get married of course, and then…I guess we'll see where that leads." Her heart soars at that, before she remembers that he's the heir to a clanker empire – _an empire with a whole clart-load of rules about marriage_ – and she's a Darwinist _commoner._ She wonders which part of that would outrage the clankers more and sniggers to herself.**

"**Not afraid of all the uppity nobles, then?" **

**He snorts –_ she's proud because a year ago he was too barking 'princely' to snort proper-like –_ and waves away her teasing concern.**

"**If all goes well, I'll be emperor. I'm sure I'll work something out…"**

"**Promise?" She tries to cover the tinge of unease that creeps into her voice.**

"**A prince's promise," he says, poker-faced but for his eyes, dancing with silent laughter.**

"**Well then…if that's all well and good, I've settled on names." He looks at her strangely, one thin eyebrow arching in confusion.**

"**Names…? For wh—"**

"**_Barking spiders_…our kids, you ninny, seeing as we're already partway into the process!" **

**He blushes furiously, like he'd forgotten what they were doing, warmth flushing over joined skin, and she can't help but burst out into loud peals of laughter. As he lays there, switching between scowling and chuckling, she buries her face in the crook of his neck and murmurs gently.**

"**_Arthur for a boy, Sophie for a girl."_ At that he stiffens suddenly –_ muscles coiling beneath taut skin –_ but that tension bleeds out just as instantly. His arms pull her closer and he plants a soft kiss in her hair.**

**"Wonderful names, indeed." She glances up at his flickering green eyes, soft like honeyed ambrosia and grins.**

**_"I barking love you."_**

**_"Aye," he chuckles. "Ich liebe dich auch."_**

**As they lie there, wrapped in young love, she wonders what could possibly go wrong.**

She should've known better. Not three months later, she'd lost him to the war. And after all these years of trying to forget, to bury that broken part of her life, she remembers most clearly, the way he looked at her that last fateful night. She'd never seen so many emotions, a mishmash of conflicting urges crammed into one pair of eyes.

Resignation battled with conviction, love with sorrow, a frantic tug-of-war decided in the moment he looked up with only fiery determination in his eyes. They had softened for an instant as green met blue for the last time, as lips crashed together in one final dance, and then he was gone. Just like that, swept away in the burning winds of war.

For the last five years, she'd gone on believing that she'd long resigned herself to never seeing those eyes again, that the memories were just sadistic taunts of what could've been. Now she knows that all along, she'd been hoping.

Hoping that when she looked up from Sophie's sparkling cyan eyes, she'd meet his emerald gaze, instead of her brother's deep blue.

Hoping that her daughter –_ his daughter –_ would one day meet her father, the man that'd captured her heart.

Hoping that one day she'd feel safe –_ protected, loved –_ in his embrace again.

And now fate had given that missing piece back _– 'deep breath, he's here' –_ only to cruelly rip it out before she could say_ "barking spiders."_

She remembers seeing his hazy green eyes slide open to gaze at her. She remembers waiting breathlessly for him to speak, to smile, to do _something._

_Anything._

**But he just keeps looking at her, those always flashing eyes dulled by strange unfamiliarity.**

"**_Alek…?"_ she asks, the words quivering with a growing fear.**

"**_Am I…Alek?"_ he replies, his once-strong voice crippled by uncertainty.**

**Anger, sorrow, fear all well up like burning bile searing her throat. Her heart feels like it's caught in some crushing grip, the life squeezed from it. Then it all bursts free and she grabs his shoulders, jerking him around even as she curses him.**

**He doesn't resist, just flops along with her violent force, and the few times their eyes meet, they're still filled with cloudy detachment. Despair creeps along her arms, saps her strength –_ her will –_ and it takes all her might not to collapse onto him. As a cold numbness seeps through her, she looks into those eyes and whispers, voice fragile and broken.**

"**_Liebhaber…?"_**

**He doesn't remember; she can see it in his eyes as he absorbs the words and her heart, held together by fragile strings of hope, falls to pieces. **

She jolts as the door clicks opens and the lady-boffin steps out, white coat trailing behind her.

Dr. Barlow sits down next to her and pulls off her black bowler, hands fiddling with the polished lip for a long moment.

"He has amnesia," she finally says and the moment of silence extends into an eternity; a heavy smog that smothers the faint sparks of hope she still has.

_Amnesia._

The lady-boffin is still talking, the odd word –_ retrograde, spontaneous –_ cuts through but the rapidly descending shroud of despair closes in around her, shutting away the outside world.

_He's forgotten then…the promises, the names, **everything**_…

She feels the tears begin to flow, sombre and heavy like the suffocating grief that coils around her heart.

Faintly, she hears the door click open again, but her most vivid memories are of his beautiful eyes.

And she can't stand to look into those twin emeralds and see only a stranger.

_Blisters…but it** hurts**._

* * *

><p><strong>Sooo... I've written this from Deryn's P.o.V because I felt that it was important to understand her contexts in all this.<strong>

**As far as my story plan goes at the moment, amnesiaalek won't be driving this thing till about chapter 4 =/**

**Feedback/critique about this (especially story progression) will come in handy, so review/pm away C:**

**Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!**


	3. Go Forth

**I've just realised the way I'm progressing this is a bit strange (in terms of linearity) lemme know if there are problems.**

**After all, my brain is dead XD**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>Jaspert Sharp, decorated war hero, is a tired, tired man.<p>

Much too tired for one barely past his twenty-sixth year, with a loving wife and a happy child, but the war had left nobody unscathed – _untouched_ – by it's lacerating reach.

Even now, years later, old wounds still ache. Not wounds of the body –_ long healed –_ but rather maladies of the mind, of memories.

Each morning as he drags himself from his warm bed into the biting pre-dawn cold, Deryn is there, humming softly by the front window, a mug of forgotten coffee at her arm.

He remembers a time, long ago when one voice had been two and her melancholic, blue eyes had glowed with love –_ with joy –_ as they stared into another's.

He remembers a time, long past, when his sister had been truly happy; content.

But that time is long gone now, devoured by the war.

Every time he opens his heavy oaken door and looks down the tidy white stones that pave the way through a happily vivid and vibrant garden, he's struck by a harsh mix of bitter irony.

Five years ago, he'd opened this same door to something radically different.

**The rain hammers down relentlessly, the deafening racket all too similar to the sound of clanker bullets chipping away at dwindling cover**. **Jaspert stands at the door, briefly struggling with a mangled umbrella before casting it aside, gruffly muttering under his breath.**

"**All this for the sodding mail…"**

**He takes a moment to brace for the harsh trials ahead before wrenching open the door and storming out into the gusting sleet. Walls of half-frozen water –**_** clouds of half-melted ice –**_** batter against him, blinding him as frozen needles numb his skin and flesh, penetrating to the bone. Still he strides on, forcing his way forward and as he reaches the end of the pavement, his squinting eyes are drawn to an approaching shape.**

**He calls out and though he's sure the words are lost to the winds, the figure perks up, hurrying it's pace. Suddenly the rain seems to part, like wildly flapping curtains and then she's**** standing there** –**_** others might not, but he'd recognise her any day**_.**

**Deryn. His sister. He hasn't seen or heard from her in months and the surprise visit lightens his insofar dark day. His lips are parting to shout a greeting through the howling wind when a few things catch his eye.**

**Firstly, Jaspert notices his sister has let her hair grow out far longer than her disguise could manage, the soaked blonde strands flinging around her shoulders. Then there is the sodden dress clinging to her legs; Jaspert knows his sister has always hated dresses, has always fought tooth and nail not to wear the blistering things. There's a pulse of dread in his gut that spreads with the dawning realisation that **_**something **_**bad has happened.**

**A closer look at her face only bolsters those fears; her eyes are glazed –**_** empty –**_** almost unseeing and Jaspert reckons there are rivers of tears mingled with the rain tracking down her cheeks.**

**His arm is rising to grasp her shoulder when she tackles him in a fierce embrace and though he can't hear it, he's sure she's sobbing strangled cries into his shoulder, can feel the way she trembles against him over even the battering of the winds. **

**As they stand there in the midst of a raging storm, Jaspert wonders what could break his sister's once indomitable spirit.**

He should've known it would happen. He'd known how they both felt, had seen it in both their eyes –_ sapphires, emeralds –_ as they'd shared not-so-secret lover's gazes. He'd met the boy, spoke to him, fought him; _known _him. He should've realised something like this was bound to happen. Should've seen the suicidal hero complex that brewed under those green lenses. But he'd let it go, given his barking _approval_ even.

There were days when, though he wanted to take back his words, to rage and hate the blistering idiot that'd gone and died on his sister, he would remember better days –_ tender gazes and fervent embraces –_ and he'd lose the will to regret that decision.

After all, how many others in this world of rigid stereotypes could bring themselves to love his boyish sister as she deserved, for who she was?

She'd begged him –_ Begged! His sister never begged… –_ not to tell ma and he eventually agreed. If he'd sent Deryn home to their mam like this –_ without the will to fight, to live –_ he feared she'd lose herself, forget who she was. Instead, he'd simply given Deryn the spare room with the quiet words.

"_Stay as long as you need."_

"_Time is the best remedy of all,"_ he'd once heard people say. _'What a load of clart_,' he thinks, remembering those dark days when he'd had nothing but empty rooms, bitter regrets and too much time for company. _'No,'_ he'd decided, because he remembers the way joy, vigour –_ life and purpose –_ had crept back into his sisters eyes as she raised her newborn daughter. Remembers the way weariness and burden had been vanquished from his own mind as he watched the young grow.

'_It's finding a reason to go on, that heals these old wounds.'_

**Jaspert leans against the shadowed wall and listens to the innocent tinkling of the children's voices. **

"**What'cha doing there, Dyl?" Sophie asks **_**– 'boisterous and loud,'**_** he thinks with a slight smile and a flash of old memories.**

"**Makin' a cake," his son mutters after a moment, quiet-like, as if he doesn't want his younger cousin to hear –**_** which is a squick silly 'cause she'll just ask again.**_

**Jaspert tries to imagine the look on his little niece's face. After all, Sophie has always despised the so-called 'girly arts', amongst which baking is sure to sit, and idolised Dylan for his acceptance of her free-wishing. Apparently, his son had taught her how to free-climb onto roofs, how to trip people into puddles of mud and how to punch 'em proper-like. To see him **_**cooking**_**… well tha—**

"**You're wearin' an apron! A **_**pink**_** one!" she nearly yells, incredulity lending to her volume and Jaspert can't help but grin.**

"**It's the only one we've got!" He can almost **_**hear**_** the blush in his son's escalating voice.**

**At this point, Sophie's voice begins to falter and Jaspert figures she's too busy gaping at the whole spectacle to speak anymore. Just as the silence is becoming a **_**squick**_** uncomfortable, her voice finally rushes back and she splutters the first words to come out.**

"**Why are you baking a barking cake anyway!" **

**The man peeks around the corner as his son turns to face her, brow set and eyes alit with determination. **

"**For my da, you ninny!" She flinches back at the word –**_** da… –**_** and the sharp fire in his son's eyes dims, softening as he moves slowly to her side.**

**Struck by her reaction, Jaspert realises Sophie Sharp is already five years old, yet she has never known her da; has never felt his green eyes, swelling with pride, rest on her nor the strong-but-gentle touch of a father's embrace. He wishes he could fill that gap, but inside, he knows he **_**can't**_**. Not for Sophie. Not for Deryn.**

"…**What's it for?" she asks after a moment, trying to pump strength back into her trembling voice.**

**Jaspert is about to step into the room, urged on by old regrets stirred anew, when his dear son, two years her senior, claps a brotherly hand to his cousin's shoulder. She looks up into Dylan's glimmering sky blue eyes as he grins – **_**unfalteringly**_** – and finds the edges of her own lips are tugging upwards.**

"**Well, you see…"**

**And when his son's done explaining, Sophie can only grin brilliantly and bounce excitedly as Jaspert turns and walks down the hallway, a fierce pride for both children welling up within.**

**Belatedly he realises he doesn't remember much of what his son said, he'd been too caught up in the way Sophie's eyes had lit up like twin suns as her sorrow was banished. **

Who could've known that the next day would bring news of a dead man amongst the living?

That's when he realises that, while his family had saved him from that desolate depression, his sister's family had still been incomplete –_ a missing piece in her puzzle_.

Until now.

Deryn had never given up hope that her boy would turn up again.

He can see it for an instant as she reads the boffin's letter, can see everything that'd been torn away snap back into place. He realises then that though he'd helped his sister heal, she'd never made a full recovery, the rippling scars on her heart never quite fading.

He realises that even though his gut tells him this'll end badly, he can't bring himself to deny his sister's happiness, no matter _how_ unlikely. So he steers her out the front door and as she bids farewell, some semblance of her once-brilliant grin in place –_ eyes dancing –_ he realises how much he missed his stalwart little sister, who'd ran around in pants, getting into fights and laughing the whole while.

When the three of them are standing before him – _the amnesiac, the broken heart, the genius –_ telling him the 'tragic' story, he finds his sister's eyes, still shining with thinly veiled hope and quashes the _'I told you so'_ grumbling of his gut.

When the boffin tells him that they want Alek to spend more time with Deryn, to stir his mind – _rekindle that fire –_ that it might bring back his forgotten memories, Jaspert slides his hard gaze to the other man.

Years spent comatose in a bed have taken their toll, Jaspert can see it in the milky paleness of his skin, the way his flesh, deprived of fats, clings to bone. But still Alek stands tall –_ regal and proud –_ and Jaspert figures nobody can forget their very nature.

For a long moment, sharp blue eyes stare into burning green ones, searching for hesitation –_ weakness –_ but there is nothing. Even without his memories, the determination Jaspert sees in Alek's eyes is eerily familiar.

The understanding springs on him in that instant, that it doesn't matter even if the sod never remembers his past. Because not a day after coming back to the world, after meeting his sister for the first time again, the two of them have already devoted themselves to each other.

He looks once more to the other man standing tall, eyes set –_ a fierce effigy of purpose –_ and tells him, gruffly to mask his quiet happiness, to get inside.

* * *

><p><strong>So this time we look through Jaspert's eyes, for several reasons, most prominently because he's a very under-explored character and his relationship with Deryn isn't given much attention (anywhere, really). I thought he was a pretty cool dude though, how many guys in that day and age would sneak underage little sisters into the airforce.<strong>

**Nevertheless, it was a bit of gamble and many a frustrated block was encountered xD**

**Feedback and critique will be appreciated as always, and I hope you all enjoyed this (and the things to come) C:**

**Thanks for reading!  
><strong>


End file.
